Can You “Teach” How to Grow A Company?

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The three obvious answers are yes, no, and maybe. I’ll start with an easy yes. You see, as adjunct faculty, that’s what I do. Yesterday, I finished “teaching” a three-hour course in the entrepreneurship program of the Cox School of Business at SMU. The course’s title was Leading a Growing Company; so literally, I just […]

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Life Passages: The Ages and Stages Don’t Ever Stop

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At 21, I remember thinking,  “Now, I’m free from the worry of  getting into trouble for having a glass of champagne at a wedding.” I felt victorious for skirting any potential recriminations for drinking when it wasn’t legal to do so, although back in those days, the consequences for underage drinking didn’t feel nearly as […]

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What Can You Do to Build a Fully Sighted Organization?

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A fully sighted company anticipates and “sees” the obvious and the not-so-obvious events, dynamics, and influences that are critical to success versus ignoring it. According to author Margaret Heffernan who wrote Willfull Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril says such blindness happens when there are things we should know, could know, but […]

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Alex Ramsey Challenges You: A Non-IQ Quiz on Logic for Leaders

    When asked to prove if something is true or false, people tend to focus on confirming “the rule” as stated, rather than falsifying it.  Humm that’s sort of a brain twister, isn’t it? As a result, even supposedly smart people can be quite illogical. That is, according to research psychologist Keith Stanovich, a prof […]

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Leadership as Theatre: General Petraeus

    If you don’t define yourself, others will. This often-quoted concept is not one I thought particularly applicable to military officers until I read the May 2010 Vanity Fair article on General David Petraeus, a man I’d never thought too much about. Sitting on an airplane headed to a conference to Ft. Lauderdale, I  learned […]

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Looking at the Surface Rather than the Substance of Airport Security

        On a recent trip to the Mexican coastal town Zihautanejo, getting through security at Dallas Ft. Worth was reasonable. Coming back was another story. At the airport, before we were allowed to check in at the reservations desk, all bags and passengers were searched carefully one by one. Then, I was required to check […]

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